Monday, 26 March 2012

Sorry.This post is a rant, albeit a fairly short one. Feel free to skip itand come back tomorrow.I use gmail and anyone who also uses gmail will surely sympathise. Iknow that Google's upgrades always seem to make things worse but therecent mandatory "upgrades" to gmail are on a whole new level ofbizarre unusability.First of all I was forced to switch from an interface that I wasperfectly happy with.

Then there was the bug that meant that while ALL of the textdescriptions of the buttons had gone the new icons didn't show soevery button showed as a blank square over which I needed to hover tofind out what it did.

With that fixed, at least to the extent where I have icons rather thenmy preferred text, the true genius of the upgrade became apparent.Trying to forward an email I tried to find the way to get my list ofaddresses to choose from. After fifteen fruitless minutes ofsearching, someone helped me find it but then I could only create anew email rather than put in the forwarding addresses for the requiredpeople. I had to cut and paste every individual address to do it.

Still, clumsy and awkward but doable.

Gets better though.

Having done that I decided to reply in the thread to the originalpost, composed my reply and sent it.Where did it go?Well it wasn't to the original sender.It was to the people I had forwarded the post to. It seems that I needto open the specific post within the thread and reply to that ratherthan to the thread itself.

Google, you have outdone yourselves. The new interface is the mostcounter-intuitive, user-unfriendly piece of software I have seen inmany a long year. And I worked in IT for twenty years and thought I'dseen it all.

I am seriously considering switching back to Hotmail which I left years ago.Nice job!

Sunday, 25 March 2012

In the last week the weather here has changed for the better. The lastcouple of days in particular have been bright, sunny and warm - warmenough for T-shirts, so yesterday I went to Lanzhou with Erika. Todd,the replacement for the replacement for Mike was going to come butdecided that as he's only been here a week he would be better spendingtime working. Aubri, the new teacher out at the Experimental Schoolalso decided not to come.They missed a fine day out. We started late because on Friday night wewere out with our local friends celebrating Erika's birthday. Westarted with a meal, at seven, and then went on to KTV until aroundeleven. Apparently after that, on her way home, Erika was called byanother local friend and went off clubbing for several more hours. Anindication of how well she celebrated her birthday might be that,after a long and fruitless search, she eventually found her apartmentkeys behind the chocolate cake in the fridge.Anyway, we took the bus to Lanzhou and went over to the same park thatMike and I visited a few months ago. I liked it then but this time itwas even better. The sun was shining and the concrete walls gleamedwhite as marble. The tops of the fence pillars had been covered withcrumbs and seeds, presumably to attract the birds, though no birdswere in evidence - either scared off by the crowds or hiding from theafternoon heat.We climbed the hill slowly. Every few yards there was someone else whowanted to have a picture taken with us. At one corner there was agroup of five teenage girls who delayed us for more than a quarter ofan hour as individually, collectively and in every combination inbetween they insisted on being photographed with each of us.The park was amazingly busy. Families picnicked on the grass, groupsof elderly musicians sang and performed in the pagodas, at the tablesoutside the top-of-the-hill cafe people played Chinese chess andmahjong while small children dodged between the legs of both tablesand patrons, chasing each other on lively games.At the Buddhist temple half way up the acrid smoke of incense hung inthe motionless air. The lack of wind has a downside. At each new turnwe looked back across the Yellow River towards the towers of the city.They rise between the mountains like an enormous game of Sim-City butthe thing, on this glorious day, that was most noticeable was thatthey were made indistinct by the pollution that plagues the city. Theirony of the bright sunlight is that it reveals the pollution all themore clearly. The mountains that rise behind the buildings, no morethan a few miles away, were almost invisible in the haze.

All the same the walk was a pleasant one: climbing easy paths,chatting with children and teenagers, smiling at the stares of theadults. A thoroughly enjoyable day that we rounded off, as you wouldexpect, in Pizza Hut, before heading home on the last bus.--------------Today has been just as glorious. When my tutorial students rang tocancel their session I was rather pleased as it gave me a chance tohead out for a couple of hours in the park. I took my writing with me,intending to sit and work on some partially completed poems or perhapsbegin some new ones.I meandered up the hill and sat under one of the trees and took out my book.I had written about two words before I was interrupted. Two boys, agedabout eight roller-skated up to me and said "Hello". The bolder of thetwo asked me a stream of questions. My name? My age? My country? Do Ilike China? And I in turn asked them some. His more reticent companionstood looking at his feet and only joined in when prompted in Chineseby the first boy. They stayed for about fifteen minutes and thenskated off.This time I managed about a dozen words before they were back withfresh questions, having consulted in Chinese about what they couldask. Do I like animals? What is my favourite animal? Do I like Chinesefood?Eventually the skated away for good and I started again.This time I was interrupted by a couple in their twenties. The girlwanted her photograph taken with a foreigner and her boyfriend washappy to take the picture. They sat down on the grass with me andtalked. The boyfriend had very good English and also some French,which will come in handy as he's in the process of trying to getpermission to emigrate to Canada. The girl had, or at least used, lessEnglish but joined in from time to time. At one stage he revealed thathe was on his first date with her - the park is a popular place forlovers' trysts. I wanted to know why he was wasting time talking to arandom foreigner when he was on a first date but he assured me that itwas her idea and she nodded her agreement.By the time they left me the sun was getting quite low and the air hadcooled off to a point where it was becoming uncomfortable to sit in myT-shirt so I headed back to the apartment to have a go at writing mypoetry in a less pleasant but less disturbed location.

If the weather keeps up I may go back to my regular post-class strollsaround the area, but I shall probably not be trying to write again.

Thursday, 22 March 2012

At almost no notice my flatmate has, for no good reason that either ofus could discern, been relocated to another city and so the school hasyet another new teacher while I have yet another new flatmate.Seems a decent enough sort but why, oh why, do they keep sending usones who don't drink? It has the effect that when we go out withChinese friends the burden of drinking falls onto just me and Erika.You might wonder why I cant just say "no". It's not actually possible.They already know that I drink and the fact that I want to drink insensible amounts doesn't enter into the equation. Once your Chinesefriends know that you drink at all the only option presented is todrink a lot.If they really get their way "a lot" means until you are rolling onthe floor being sick into a bucket.The only way not to drink a lot is, from day one, not to drink at all.For example, on Sunday, before Thomas' unexpected departure, we hadlunch with some local friends. We started at about noon and from theoutset I insisted that I couldn't drink as I had tutorial studentscoming at four and I was pretty sure that their parents would be lessthan happy if I turned up drunk.In spite of that they continued to try to press beer onto me for thewhole afternoon and it was only because I was stubborn to the point ofalmost offending them that I managed to get away with drinking asingle bottle.

So next time I get a change of flatmate I'm hoping for one who drinksand can share this burden.

Sunday, 18 March 2012

I just remembered today that I haven't watched any of the recentepisodes of The Office as it was on mid-season break when I left formy Spring Vacation.So I started to watch them today.And stopped.Almost immediately.Well, almost immediately the second episode started.Minutes into it.Now I can't watch any more of the series. The last eleven episodes aredestined to be designated as "stories that never happened", just asone complete season of Doctor Who never happened.Not in my reality anyway.And for exactly the same reason.Catherine Tate.I've checked, she's in at least seven consecutive episodes.Why did TWO of my favourite series have to add her to their casts?It's clearly a conspiracy.I cannot stand her, to the point where I cannot bring myself to watchanything she's in. I don't like her alleged comedy and I like her evenless as an actress.Well I suppose it will save me the cost of buying the DVDs of season eight.

And now the question is which series that I like will she pop up in next?

To reiterate: I can post to this blog by sending emails to it but Ican't actually see it because the Chinese firewall blocks all of thecommon blogging platforms. Blogger? Can't see it. Wordpress? Forgetit.I get a post back from the blog containing whatever I posted so I knowthat it's been posted, but that's it.The result is that I can't go back and look at posts that I havepreviously made so that I sometimes forget just where I have got towhen I use sequences of linked titles. Mea culpa. But what can I do?It also means that if, as I almost inevitably do, I spot typos mereseconds after hitting ENTER it's too late to do anything about them. Ihave no means of correcting a faulty post.

With all that in mind please forgive errors in the titles and tpyos in the text.

The plan was that we would alternate days in Yangshuo and days out –mainly hiking – varying the routine only in response to the weather.Our first planned day out was the straightforward and flight hikealong the roadside out to Moon Hill. The rather poor map that we hadindicated that it was about eleven kilometres round trip and thatthere were a number of attractions to be seen on the way – The TotemTrail, The Butterfly Spring, The Dragon Caves, The Banyan Tree Parkand Moon Hill itself. We set off after breakfast.The initial walk was to the edge of town where the more elaborate anddecorative buildings of the tourist quarter give way to functional,shoe-box-squat structures that are purely functional and far moretypical of modern Chinese architecture. Soon these too disappeared andwe found ourselves heading down the side of a broad highway. It wasn'tespecially busy and it was lined with fields on both sides. Beyond thefields, far more magnificent when seen here, without the town, are thegiant karsts that make the area one of China's most scenic places andput it high on any tourists list. They rise from the flatsurroundings, or from the water filled fields, like improbable giantmolehills. Most of them are conical but here and there nature haswrought them into more elaborate shapes as pieces of them have brokenand fallen or the wind and weather have eroded them.Before too long we came to the first marked "attraction".It was the Totem Trail which, we discovered too late, had the lessthan attractive price of 108Y. Now ten pounds may not sound like a lotbut by local standards it's a considerable sum and for that you shouldexpect a pretty special attraction. First though you have to navigatethe arcane procedure for actually paying it. You go to a ticket boothwhere you pay and you are issued with a ticket. Then another employeeescorts you to a second ticket booth where various details are askedand filled in on the form by another employee who takes and stamps theticket. Another employee then leads you to the gate where yet anothertakes your ticket and admits you. I suppose it's one way of findingemployment for the huge population but seven people (two in eachbooth) to do work that could far more efficiently be accomplished byone seems a little excessive.

So we were in. After a small and deeply uninteresting museum there isthe trail itself. My advice is not to bother. Phoney totem poles havebeen set up along a path that you can easily walk along in about tenminutes. Here and there, there are equally phoney "village huts" wherepeople in authentic polyester prehistoric costume try to convince youto have your picture taken with them (printed and for sale at thegate). Then, just as you are thinking "There must be more to it thanthis" you discover you are right. There is more. There is a gift shopthrough which a snaking aisle leads you past the overpriced souvenirsfor almost as long as you have spent on the trail.A final twist and you are back out on the car park.

We spent a few minutes trying to find any sign indicating either theadmission price or the true nature of the attraction but were unableto discover one, which prompted our decision to skip the ButterflySpring as it had a similar lack of detail at its ticket booth.We did however stroll on to the Banyan Tree Park where, for a far morereasonable 20Y we wandered around a pleasant and busy park which justhappens to have a Banyan tree in the middle of it. Sure, it's just apark but it's a nice park filled, even on a fairly gloomy day, withpeople enjoying themselves. Families were playing with each other.People were wandering round just relaxing. Bamboo rafts were puntingalong the river.We continued on. The Assembly Dragon Caves were along a detour fromthe main road and we decided that if we had the time and theinclination we would see them on the ay back and pressed on to MoonHill itself. Once again it was in a park with a small entry fee. It'scalled Moon Hill because there is a roughly semi-circular rock arch atthe top of the hill which has its lower edge obscured by trees whenviewed from the level of the road. The result is to make it look likea crescent shaped hole through the rock.The climb up to it was steep, zig-zagging between the trees along apath that took about twenty minutes to climb. It was about half thaton the way back down.

The walk back to town also seemed to go rather faster, perhaps helpedby the decision not to visit the caves. Back in town we opted for acurry in a Malay restaurant and then settled down in a pub called TheAlley for a couple of beers. It had been a long and pleasant walkthough mostly along a main road. We made plans for a couple more walksand called it a day.

I woke up freezing cold and shivering and unsure where I was. I wascertain that I had been on a train but this was clearly a room. Then Iremembered the train had been yesterday. And the day before. I hadcaught it at about seven on Thursday night and got off it at abouteleven on Friday Night. The journey had been uncomfortable. OvernightI had been in a top bunk with virtually no clearance and absolutely nochance of either sitting up or turning over. They day had been spentalternating between pacing the carriage – I had no seat – reading abook I'd bought in Xi-An and listening to music. It had passed slowly.Very slowly.Then I had been picked up by a pre-arranged taxi and an hour and ahalf later had checked into my room at Meicheng English School inYangshou. The room had been cold. The heating had been off for sometime and the wooden floors and full wall window had leached all theheat around. Putting the heating on had made little difference andeven in my dreams I had been freezing.I showered – more to warm me than to clean me – and went out for afirst walk around Yangshuo.It's been said, and with some truth, that Yangshuo isn't really Chinaat all. Instead it's a kind of airlock between the real China and therest of the world. It's full of tourist shops and western restaurantsand most people there speak at least a little English. Many of themare fluent.I spent the whole day just refamiliarising myself with the layout ofthe town. Breakfast was bacon and eggs. Lunch was a ham and cheesesandwich. Dinner was a burger and fries followed by a couple of beers.I was sticking to my diet with ease. On the whole though it was a dayof doing nothing and when I went early to my bed it was good to findthat the heating had done its job and the room was pleasantly warm.Tomorrow John was arriving and although I expected that for his firstday he would be too jet-lagged to do much it was the beginning of themain part of the holiday.

The main problem, I realised, as I waited for him at the bus stop nextmorning, was that although I knew what time his flight was due in atGuilin, I had no idea if it would be on time and no idea how long itwould take him to make his way from there to here.In the event he was later than I expected and I had time to go eatsome breakfast before he turned up. We walked down to the hotel he'dbooked for his first night and when he'd checked in and freshened upwent back for his first look at West Street.

West Street is the main tourist part of Yangshuo. It's a narrowpedestrian-only street several hundred metres long. It's lined withshops selling souvenirs of all varieties. Necklaces nestle side byside statues. T-shirts hang above lucky cats with their waving arms.Carvings, paintings, postcards, jewellery, Chinese Chess sets,miniature Mah-jong sets with tiles too small to ever handle.Interspersed among them are cafes and restaurants and bars. Sidealleys run off the main street, dodging over bridges that span thenarrow water channels, lined with more restaurants and bars.At the far end, by the river, there is a market where larger items canbe found – fans five feet across, carpets, statues of stone and wood,stone xylophones (though perhaps that should be lithophones).It's busy and colourful though why the salesmen seemed to think Iwould be interested in buying silk dresses remains a mystery.

We wandered relatively aimlessly – me because I knew the area wellenough already and John because the lack of sleep on the flight andthe jet-lag were taking their toll.There were two weeks ahead to get a more detailed view of the town.

This week three separate people have emailed me to ask what's happenedto the blog lately. This is most gratifying as I hadn't realised thatas many as three people read it regularly enough to notice that myposting rate has fallen so badly. Sorry about that. There isn't anyspecial reason for it, I just haven't got around to posting anything.

I will in my next post get back to talking about my holiday inYangshuo. For this one let me tell you about an incident this weekwhich illustrates perfectly one of the major differences in teachingin China and England.Earlier this week I had a class in which a number of students arrivedlate. As they were only a few minutes late and the lesson is onlyforty-five minutes long, rather than spend a lot of time addressing itI gave them a brief warning and sent them to their seats. One of them,a girl of about twelve always has an attitude problem in class and shewas also eating when she came in. A few minutes later she startedfighting with one of the boys. I sent them to separate corners of theroom to separate them. When I let her sit again she immediatelystarted a conversation in Chinese with the girl next to her. I toldher very clearly to stop talking and her response was to echo thewarning in a mocking tone.So far this could all be a student in in any school in the UK and,indeed, it isn't the student's behaviour that has caused me tocomment. It's what happened next.As she was clearly taking no notice of me at the end of the lesson Itook her to the office to be spoken to by her Chinese English teacher.This teacher shouted at her quite sternly and then telephoned herclass teacher who came to the office and shouted at her somemore...and gave her a series of extremely hard open handed slapsacross the face. Hard enough to leave the face a stinging shade ofred. Hard enough that they rocked her on her feet.I was stunned. If any teacher in the west did that they would losetheir job immediately. They would probably arrested for assault and beput on a child protection register. This isn't meant as a criticism ofthe teachers involved. This kind of punishment is perfectly normal.Commonplace, even. There were five other teachers present and not oneof them reacted at all. It's such a normal thing that it's not evenworthy of comment for them. It sits very uncomfortably with us though.The girl had been a pain in the arse in class and had needed to bespoken to but I hadn't expected her to receive a physical beating forit. If I had realised that she would, then I probably wouldn't havetaken her to the office at all. It's made me rethink my policy ofthreatening them with their class teachers as a threat I'm notprepared to carry out is no threat at all.

Last week I had witnessed something else in the office that was alsopertinent. The junior students had been given a dictation test intheir Chinese English class and most of them had done very badly. Isaw some of the papers and they were very poor indeed. However, forus, a failure of so many students wouldn't be looked at as a failureof learning it would be looked at as a failure of teaching. Theresponse here though was to call ALL of the failed students into theoffice and give each one a few sharp raps across the palm of the handwith a heavy ruler. Dozens of them were lined up and punished in thisway. FOR FAILING A TEST!I sort of understand, without in the least condoning, why you mightuse physical punishment for discipline issues, but for failing a test?It really is a different educational world.